Brussels, 02/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is preparing to take up position in the battle raging for more than a year between the European Commission and the Council over the legal basis on which legal rights for the protection of the environment are to be approximated. Two draft reports by the EP's Committees recommend that the plenary come out in favour of the Commission's view next week, which argues that this should be based on Community law, and more specifically on Community powers in terms of protecting the environment. The Council, however, wants to avoid Community law being involved in issues of justice and wants the legal basis to be the Treaty of the European Union (the section on Justice and Home Affairs). The report by Giuseppe Di Lello Finuoli (GUE/NGL, Italy) favours the draft Framework Directive proposed by Denmark - the EP is only being consulted because the proposal is based on the third pillar of the Treaties. The report by Ria Oomen-Ruijten (EPP, Netherlands) comes out for the other Commission proposal, a draft directive based on the Treaty of the Communities, for which the codecision procedure applies (this will be the first reading by the EP).
The Di Lello report adopted by 39 to 2 by the Citizens' Freedoms Committee notes that the Community has powers in the framework of environmental protection to decree that behaviour be subject to criminal sanctions at national level, without prejudice to additional measures under judicial co-operation under the Treaty of the European Union. Consequently the report calls for the Council to adopt the Commission's proposal. Concerning the Danish proposal (which it wants to be explicitly based on the directive proposed by the Commission) the Di Lello report retains only the obligation to punish damage to the environment, referring the scope of application of this obligation back to the directive.
The Oomen-Ruijten report adopted by 35 to 4 by the Environment Committee shares the views put forward in the Di Lello report and approves the European Commission's draft directive while tabling significant amendments. It suggests adding a series of recitals to the directive, calling for Community powers in this area. Unlike the Commission, the EP wants the directive to be based not on a list of EU environment regulations, but for all violations of EU environment law to be punishable.
The aim is to ensure that all the protective measures adopted at European level are included in the scope of the text, says the rapporteur.
Quick reminder of the legal battle. In 1999, Denmark had presented a Council proposal for a framework decision on the protection of the environment by penal law. The Parliament had given its opinion on this text on 7 December 2000, calling for major changes to be made to it. On 13 March 2001, two days before the Council gave its stance on the Danish proposal, the Commission had presented a rival draft directive. Both texts have the same aim: - to ensure that damage to the environment is sanctioned as a crime, with crimes defined at European level and sanctions freely chosen by each Member State. The content of both texts is also similar, but have different legal bases. On 15 March 2001, the Fifteen agreed on the main lines of the Danish proposal, but had not adopted the text as they expected to give their opinion on the legal base, under the threat of the matter being referred to the Court of Justice if they did not take account of the Commission proposal. The Council has not examined the issue since then, except to present, on 20 December, a version of the Danish proposal amended by Coreper with a view to consulting the European Parliament, but in which the Council still sticks to its legal position.